4 Of Our Favorite Resources for Effective Leadership Communication

Effective leadership communication is always evolving. Whether it’s from acquiring new employees or the simple evolution of your team’s expectations, you must adapt.

The good news is, you don’t have to do it alone. There are various resources that will help you develop your communication skills. Even more importantly, they’ll help you find techniques and a voice that fits both your personality and your employees’ needs.

But who has the time to weed through the options? In just 55 seconds, Google gives you 745,000,000 options for resources for effective leadership communication. To stop your eyes from going cross, we narrowed it down to the top resources you need to continue developing your employee communication skills.

This powerful book by Jim Haudan, co-founder and chairman at Root Inc., is designed to jump-start a truth-telling environment. The book, as a whole, helps leaders assess their own leadership blind spots -- one of which is how you communicate with and engage employees.

Haudan offers various exercises, including Walls of Greatness and Reality. Here’s a preview of the first three steps:

Give each team member three to four large Post-It notes. Ask each employee to write down one item per note that is great about the team, how they’ve worked together, and what they executed in the past 12 months.

Have the team members place each of these on open wall space and start to “affinity-group” them. Line up the various notes that fit under the same theme. You should end up with numerous vertical rows of key themes.

Have team members alternate reading all the notes aloud and provide any commentary they see fit. At the end, ask the group for the story that describes what the team is great at. Capture this “Wall of Greatness” story on a flipchart.

The exercise goes on to discover why these successes and realities exist. As a result, you can discover where your team needs motivation or where you can add opportunities for recognition.

Some effective leadership communication tactics never go out of style. Even though Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee wrote this New York Times bestseller in 2004, their research and guided information on emotional intelligence are timeless.

Through this book, you’ll see that effective leadership communication can’t happen with skills and smarts alone. You must connect with others using emotional intelligence traits, like empathy and self-awareness. It’s through these traits that you’ll resonate with employees and fluidly move between employee conversations, no matter their personality.

For those of you who don’t have time to sit and read a book, this podcast is a valuable resource. In these episodes, Jesse Lahey moves through the various ranges of communication with intentional detail. From brain science for communications to emotional transparency all the way to helping you achieve goals, he has something for leaders on all levels.

At times, leaders need to grow outside of their comfort zones. This means going beyond a helpful book or podcast and putting yourself directly into a course. One of the major benefits is that you’re connecting with other leaders who are looking for that same effective leadership communication advice.

AMA’s seminar is held both in-person and online, so the options will fit any needs. In this course, you’ll find out quickly that without leadership communication, there can be no execution -- no matter how brilliant the strategy. Luckily, this fast-paced course is designed to strengthen leadership communication skills through practical techniques that shape leadership messages, hone authentic leadership voices, and help you engage in powerful conversations that achieve results.